The Venetian Riviera Culture

The defining local institution is the open-air holiday. Cavallino-Treporti has the densest concentration of campsites and holiday villages in Europe, and generations of German and Austrian families return to the same pitch -- a genuine, if unglamorous, culture of its own.

The passeggiata along the seafront in the evening is the other daily ritual, and in Jesolo it happens on Via Bafile, one of the longest pedestrian shopping streets in Europe.

Behind the resorts, the lagoon culture persists: the fishing valleys of Treporti and the market gardens of the peninsula, whose asparago bianco and artichokes are a real local speciality.

The food follows: Adriatic seafood, sardines in saor, clams and grilled fish, alongside the pizza-and-schnitzel register that a coast serving Austrian and German families inevitably develops.

The seasonal rhythm is total. Between November and April much of the Riviera closes, and the people who run it live somewhere else.